RAEMAEKERS’
CARTOON
HISTORY OF THE WAR
RAEMAEKERS’
CARTOON
HISTORY OF THE WAR
COMPILED BY
J. MURRAY ALLISON
Editor of Raemaekers’ Cartoons, Kultur in Cartoons,
The Century Edition de Luxe Raemaekers’ Cartoons, etc.
VOLUME ONE
THE FIRST TWELVE MONTHS OF WAR
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
The Century Co.
FOREWORD
In all the welter of the tragic upheaval which is shatteringinstitutions once thought immutable, condemning millions to physicaldeath and awakening other millions to spiritual life, making staggeringdiscoveries of unexpected human strength or weakness,thrusting men into fame one day or to oblivion the next, there hasbeen nothing more dramatic than the sudden manifestation of thegenius of the Dutchman, Louis Raemaekers, who, as Europe recoiledfrom the first shock of German barbarity, threw down hisbrush for his pencil and by the intensity of his spirit aroused thecompassion and fired the anger of the world with his cartoons of theBelgian violation.
He, more than any other individual, has made intensely clear tothe people the single issue upon which the war is joined. Morethan cartoonist, he is teacher and preacher, with the vision, faith,and intensity of a St. Francis, a Luther, or a Joan of Arc.
On August 1, 1914, we find him a quiet, gentle man, the sonof a country editor, happy in his family, devout, contemplative,loving beauty and peace, contentedly painting the good and lovelythings he saw among the tulip-fields and waterways, the cattle andthe wind-mills of his own native Holland before the gray-cladmillions of the Kaiser burst into the low countries with fire andsword.
Then comes the miracle of his transformation; the idyllic isthrust aside by the hideous reality; beauty is drowned in a bestialorgy of force; and in place of the passive painter arises the fierypreacher; the brush is discarded for the pencil, and the pencil inhis hands becomes an avenging sword, because by it millions ofpeople have been aroused to a clear-cut realization of the fact thatthe issue of this war is no less than Slavery and Autocracy versusFreedom and Democracy.
The very first of his war cartoons indicated the prophetic visionof the man, and gave the first evidence of his inspiration andgenius. It is called “Christendom after Twenty Centuries” andshows a bowed and weeping figure crouching under the swordand la